Monday, November 13, 2017

GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (MGM, 1939) Warner Archive

Labeling most
any movie “the best picture of ‘any’
year!” would suggest a marketer’s penchant for extreme hyperbole. I have
read the back jackets of far too many contemporary DVD and Blu-ray releases
declaring their product “an instant
classic” or “the greatest of all time.”
Frankly, such gushing praise at the time of ‘any’ movie’s theatrical debut does
all movies a grave disservice; essentially a testament to clever PR and/or some
very bad writing by critics, pompous enough to believe they alone can assess ‘greatness’ on a whim, whistle and
arrogant wave of their pen. How gauche! Occasionally, however, time proves the
rarest of exceptions to this rule. Case in point: Sam Wood’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips(1939); just one of
the outstanding screen achievements from that golden epoch in Hollywood’s
folklore. It goes without saying, 1939 holds a hallowed place in cinema history
as an ancient flower almost impossible to fathom; a scant twelve months,
telescoping nearly two decades of technical and artistic evolution to bring
forth a staggering multitude of bona fide classics – each an archetype in its
genre. Goodbye, Mr. Chips is no
better than its competition from this year – which is saying a great deal about
its superb craftsmanship. Based on the novella by famed author, James Hilton, Goodbye, Mr. Chipsis the byproduct of
an ambitious intercontinental venture launched the year before by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s raja, Louis B. Mayer; an Anglo-American détente to market
American stars to international audiences in ‘British-made’ pictures. For the
briefest wrinkle in time the audacity of this intrusion by the Yanks into
England’s already well-established picture-making business clicked as it
should. However, at the outbreak of WWII, MGM would be forced to close up shop;
after the war, leasing their facilities to other studios at a premium.

Without the war
Hollywood’s wellspring of raw talent – both in front of and behind the camera –
would have lacked a good many riches we have long since taken for granted as
part of the American film-making landscape; Europe’s mass exodus of creatives,
made exiles by Hitler’s blitzkriegs, decidedly America’s gain. In all
likelihood, western audiences would have never known the shimmering miracles
put forth by such artists as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder. Hollywood’s British
colony alone included such émigré luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock, Basil
Rathbone, Rex Harrison, David Niven, Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Ronald
Colman, Roddy McDowell, Angela Lansbury and Donald Crisp – to name but a
handful. Two more ‘imports’ from this period, destined to make a great splash
on this side of the Atlantic were Robert Donat and Greer Garson. While Garson
would go on to have a prolific career as the cultured Irish lass in a spate of memorable
MGM pictures throughout the 1940’s and beyond (Pride and Prejudice, Random
Harvest, Mrs. Parkington, The Valley of Decision, and, the
Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver among
them), Robert Donat’s enduring legacy – at least as far as American audiences
are concerned – can be exclusively tied to Goodbye,
Mr. Chips; an affectingly tragic performance as Charles Edward Chipping;
the lonely Latin Classics master of Brookfield Boy’s Academy. The picture had
been in development under Irving G. Thalberg, before his untimely death in 1936;
L.B. Mayer, moving forward with the project relatively untouched, if under his
newly appointed ‘college of cardinals’
with resident workhorse, Sam Wood assigned to direct. Wood is one of those directors today largely
forgotten, despite some iconic movies (including A Night At The Opera 1935, A
Day at the Races 1936, Kitty Foyle,
1941, Kings Row, 1941, The Pride of the Yankees – both in 1942
– and For Whom The Bell Tolls, 1943).
To say nothing of his credible assist on Gone
with the Wind (1939), shooting second unit and a few crucial scenes to help
fellow Metro alumni/loan out, Victor Fleming speed up production over at
Selznick International.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a practically perfect
entertainment, held together by Robert Donat's heart-felt central performance.
Donat convincingly ages from a youthful twenty-five to whiskery seventy-eight
with superb make-up. Latex applications, skull caps and spirit gum will only
get you so far. What truly sells the metamorphosis is Donat’s subtly nuanced
intonations; his expert timing too, and, his unvarnished believability. This
never wanes or falters. To witness Donat in any of the many stages in Chips'
life is to experience the true art and craftsmanship of a very fine thespian at
work. Even knowing it is Donat from start to finish, it remains almost
impossible to accept the same actor encompassing all these many variations
within a scant 114 minutes. In a year virtually dominated by accolades and
plaudits afforded David O. Selznick’s Gone
With the Wind, Donat’s portrait of Chips
trumped Gable's Rhett Butler to win the Best Actor Academy Award. In 1939,
Donat’s ascendance to the podium was perhaps eased by the fact he was a virtual
unknown to Americans. It is always easier to buy into ‘the truth’ of a performance before the ‘built-in’ lure and/or
curse of stardom has taken hold. It is also a lot riskier for a movie to garner
critical praise and box office popularity without the magnetic pull of a ‘name’ above the title. Yet, this should
neither dismiss nor discount the astonishing verisimilitude Donat has wrought
on the screen. His Chips is every bit as enduringly heartbreaking and blessed
with a gentlemanly grace; Chips’ exquisitely retiring zest for life repeatedly
denied any lasting happiness by the hands of fate.

It has always
struck me as more than a little ironic how often the most memorable of
movie-land heroes lack great brawn or merely exist in the absence of committing
daring deeds. While there is undeniably something to be said for the Gables,
McQueens, Brandos and Holdens – men of action – there really is a lot more to
be unearthed and discussed about the James Stewarts, George Brents and Henry
Fondas who have emerged as the seemingly ‘common man’ and distinctly unassuming
among the great stars. In retrospect, it’s a tie as to which of these polar
opposites has left us more spellbound in the dark: the Sergeant Yorks, Atticus
Finches, George Baileys and Elwood P. Dowds of the silver screen, casting their
own giant shadows. From an anthropological perspective, I suspect it has
something to do with the notion we all aspire, but may not see a mirror image
of ourselves in paragons like Clark Gable, Marlon Brando or Errol Flynn, but
may find flashes of ourselves imbedded in the likes of a James Stewart or
Gregory Peck. Whatever the reason, Robert Donat is perhaps the slightest among
these aforementioned monuments – a diminutive Englishman with a common brow and
unprepossessing physical stature; in hindsight, the perfect star to embody
Charles Edward Chipping.

Donat’s greatest
achievement in Goodbye, Mr. Chips is
he breaks our hearts, apparently by accident. He shows us a life, not as oft
perfectly concocted for the movies, but frequently sad, isolated and
devastating in its disappointments. Donat’s best moments in the picture are
encapsulated by the most sorrowful lows embellished in the screenplay; the way
he raises or lowers a furry eyebrow just so, revealing a subtler gaze of abject
bewilderment at having lost both his wife and stillborn son in childbirth, or
his timid body language, emanating wounded regrets when repeatedly denied
school-sanctioned promotions that rightfully ought to have gone to him, or, in
the final reel, in his seemingly pleasant acquiescence to death at the tender
age of ninety-eight, dreamily slipping into a painterly reminiscence of all
those generations of young lads his own contributions have helped to mold. It
might have all become easily maudlin and contrite without the right actor in
the part. Instead, Donat’s artistry presents us with a ‘Chips’ none of us want
to say goodbye to; the mentor for whom most any young boy would proudly boast
to call upon for guidance as a surrogate father-figure. L.B. Mayer likely considered Goodbye, Mr. Chips more sensibly
marketable in Europe where Donat already had cache as a leading man on both the
stage and screen. Mostly thanks to
Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935),
Donat had a modicum of notoriety on this side of the Atlantic.

Greer Garson, on
the other hand, was a virtual unknown, though yet again, one of the rarest and
most satisfying discoveries Mayer would ever lay claim to as a ‘star maker’ par excellence, adding to
his formidable roster of talents back home. So, the legend goes – Mayer had
come to London in 1938 on a routine goodwill tour, to finalize a slate of
projects at his fledgling MGM-British Studios; also, to scout a few promising
West End properties to make into movies. While staying at the Dorchester, Mayer
elected to get tickets for the play, ‘Old
Music’. Assuming it a musical - a genre Mayer adored - he was instead
bitterly disappointed when ‘Old Music’
turned out to be metaphorical for a creaky melodrama. Mayer hated it. However,
possessing a keen eye for talent, almost immediately he took an interest in the
play’s bright-eyed and henna-haired ingénue, Greer Garson. Hurrying backstage
after the performance to introduce himself and ask the young lady to supper,
Garson astutely brought along her mother to chaperone the evening. Ever the
uber-conservative, Mayer liked girls who like their mothers. Within the hour, a
contract was signed, Garson agreeing to appear in Goodbye, Mr. Chips in the modest part as Katherine. Effectively,
she almost stole the show. Without question or guile, she charmed the audience
with her rewarding Irish wit and charisma.
Garson could be counted upon to affect this air in later pictures with
varying degrees of success. Yet properly placed in a Tiffany setting like
Katherine Chipping, Garson is nothing short of miraculous; lilting to the
strains of an Austrian waltz, ebulliently letting out the champagne bubbles of
an exuberant little laugh that continues to echo throughout the Alps as she
tells Edward he is ‘nice’ after being
stranded with him on a mountain top for several hours in a dense fog, or
affectionately lying at his feet in their living room after they are married,
gazing with adoring sincerity as she quietly admits, “My darling, you’re a very real person and a very human person. Don’t
ever be afraid, Chips. There’s nothing you can’t do.”

Goodbye, Mr. Chips would also tap into Mayer’s
affinity for telling stories that mythologized and romanticized a particular
way of life fast fading into the sunset of history. America’s affinity for
Britain, particularly during the war, generally leaned towards glowing
portraits of that unconquerable English stoicism; its unabated pride for
remaining steadfast and truer still to its time-honored principles and
traditions, and its imperishable faith in the common good of humanity, despite
being repeatedly tested by darker forces looming on the horizon of a European
hemisphere soon to be engulfed by the flames of WWII. Quietly setting aside
Britain’s own checkered history, often bloodthirsty in its ‘nation-building’ conquests, American
movies instead presented our far-away cousins as quaintly superior, ruled by
decorum, propriety and goodness, occasionally – humorously – stuffy, but always
as a more refined extension of America’s own big-hearted and sentimentalized
prospects for the future. It served the fantasy well that many movies
supposedly set in England were actually shot on Metro’s studio backlot in sunny
Culver City, their air of fog-laden authenticity a complete fabrication from
the ground up. Goodbye, Mr. Chipsis, in fact, a regression into England’s nation-building era, with only twinged
suggestions of its classism and stiff upper-lipped congeniality fast coming to
an end. Goodbye, Mr. Chipsstops
short of growing cynical about what the future may bring. Indeed, with Adolf
Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland already a fait accompli, such potentials for a
brighter tomorrow – whether pitched on either side of the Atlantic – similarly,
if not perfectly, marked an alignment between two nations – America and the
United Kingdom; destined to jointly procure a policy for peace by the end of
the Second World War.

After an
exuberant main title, set to the impeccably academic strains of Richard
Addinsell and Eric Maschwitz’ Brookfield School Song, Goodbye, Mr. Chipsbegins in 1928 with Edward Charles Chipping, a
spry eighty-three. Ordered by his physician to abstain from commencement
exercises for the first time in his entire career to stave off a cold, Chips
instead defies doctor’s orders, scurrying in cap and gown toward the chapel. He
encounters a new student who is also late. Chips listens intently to the
school’s anthem; the cherub-faced newbee regarding him with casual amusement as
a very old man. Afterward, the established students are elated to have Chips
join them. By now he has become far more than just a favorite educator;
something of a beloved school mascot.
Returning to his home on the outskirts of Brookfield Academy, Chips is
attended to by his stodgy housekeeper, Mrs. Wickett (Louise Hampton). Ordering
the woman to ‘go about her loathsome statistics’, Chips reclines in his
armchair next to the fireplace and quietly slips into his daydreams.

We regress to
Charles Edward Chipping, aged twenty-five; an ambitious young man on his
nervous journey by train to begin his career as a Latin Classics instructor.
The train is overcrowded with boys also bound for Brookfield, including young,
John Colley (Terry Kilburn, who will play all but one of his future relatives,
attending the school). Their exuberance at the sight of a hot air balloon
causes mild pandemonium for all except one lad, who sits with his head down,
quietly homesick and isolated in the corner. In attempting to comfort the
child, Chips inadvertently causes him to burst into tears. The others assume
Edward has either struck the boy or said something mean-spirited, causing a
pall to settle in for the rest of their journey. Arriving at Brookfield on the
first day’s commencement, Edward is befriended by German Classics professor,
Max Staefel (Paul Henried). Noting Edward’s giddiness, the other academics
playfully goad him about the ‘blood sport’ first year students engage in with
newly arrived teachers. Indeed, Edward is in for a rough time. On his first
day’s lessons, his graduation cap is knocked off by a trip cord; the pupils
exuberantly kicking it about the floor until John Colley ‘rescues’ it; further
beating the crooked rim against his knee – presumably, to clean the dust from
it.

The boys’ pranks
continue. They ask Edward loaded questions, such as ‘who was Cadiz?’ to which Edward – taking the boys at face value –
begrudgingly exclaims, “Cadiz is a town
in Spain!” Now, the classroom erupts into sheer bedlam, the noise level
bringing Brookfield’s outwardly gruff Head Master, Wetherby (Lyn Harding) into
their midst. After he has settled Edward’s class for him with a very stern
glower, Wetherby asks for a quiet meeting in his office. He informs Edward that
the rigors of a school master are not for everyone; furthermore, what he has
seen today constitutes a very bad start from which it will be difficult – if
not impossible – for Edward to recover his dignity. In his defense, Edward
promises no further outbursts. However, in pressing the point, Edward makes an
almost fatal error in judgment; confining the school’s best rugby player, along
with the rest of the boys, to detention during a crucial match with rivals from
Sedgewick Academy. The game lost, Edward
confides in his pupils he has overstepped his boundaries, adding “If I have
lost your respect, there is little else that I value.”

Time heals most
of these initial wounds and, as the years pass, Edward incrementally gains
confidence as well as the respect of his students, both present and former;
although, without the essential warmth necessary to make his tenure at the
school anything more than a largely meaningless profession interpolated with
casual friendships. Asked by Staefel of his plans for summer holidays, Edward
suggests he will retire to Harrowgate for relaxation. Instead, Staefel commands
Edward accompany him on a walking tour of his native Austria. Their sojourn
will prove fortuitous in unexpected ways. For on only their second day’s
crossing, the men are introduced to Katherine Ellis, a feisty English
suffragette, and her rather mannish travelling companion, Flora (Judith Furse).
The ladies are headed to Vienna, with a stopover at a Bavarian retreat in the
Alps. As fate would have it, Edward and Staefel are staying at the same inn;
Edward getting lost in a fog while hiking up one of the nearby mountains.
Calling out for help, he is confronted by Kathy’s gentle voice nearby and spends
most of the afternoon and early evening in her care on the mountain’s ledge.
The two are acquainted socially. Edward sheepishly confides, “I’m terrified of ladies.” “Because I’m a
strong-minded female who rides a bicycle and wants the vote?” she asks, to
which he honestly confesses, “Oh, no.
Because you’re so very nice-looking.” Amused by his sincerity, Kathy
impetuously adds, “Frankly, Mr. Chipping
– so are you.”

Returning to the
inn together moments before Staefel and Flora are about to commence with a
search party, Edward is declared the hero of the Alps. Embarrassed by all the
undue praise, Edward blushingly retreats to his room rather than stay for the
celebration. Flora is mildly put off by Edward’s overt shyness, but Kathy
defends him, saying “I rather feel sorry
for shy people…because they’re lonely too”, quite unaware Edward has
overheard their entire conversation from his balcony. Travelling with Staefel
via a steamer down the Blue Danube, Edward can talk of nothing but the hours he
spent with ‘Miss Kathy’ in the Alps. Staefel quietly acknowledges the lasting
impression the girl has made on his travelling companion; both men innocent of
the fact Flora and Kathy are also aboard. Later, in a resplendent ballroom,
romantically lit by candlelight, an orchestra serenading patrons to the tune of
Strauss’ Blue Danube Waltz, Edward and Kathy are reintroduced. She tempts him
to ask her to dance. At first, he infers to being ill-equipped to carry out the
task. Prodded by his own persistent resolve to break free from his shyness,
Edward works up the guts to accept Kathy’s wager. The couple spends the rest of
the evening whirling about the dance floor, the scene dissolving to a parting
of the ways at Vienna’s railway depot the next morning. At the last possible
moment, as the train is pulling away with Kathy and Flora aboard, Edward throws
caution to the wind, with an impromptu proposal of marriage. She blissfully
accepts before a cloud of steam envelopes the platform and parts the lovers.
Staefel laughingly reveals to Edward that both he and Flora have known about
their whirlwind romance for quite some time; Flora having already picked out
the church and Staefel given her their contact information.

At the start of
the new semester, Edward shocks his contemporaries by returning to Brookfield
with a new bride on his arm. These stuffy academics are instantly enamored by
Kathy’s forthright disposition and graceful charm. Edward takes notice how his
colleagues and the students treat him differently as a result of Kathy’s warmth
towards them. After Brookfield elects to
appoint Edward to his own house, Kathy institutes frequent ‘parties’ for the
boys, building a solid relationship between them and her husband. She nicknames
him, ‘Chips’ of Brookfield; a moniker destined to stick for the rest of his
days. Kathy tells her husband he must allow the barriers he has placed between
him and his pupils to slip just a little, in order to become more than simply
their educator; indeed, to be a trusted friend and father-figure to all ‘his
boys’. A short while later, Kathy reveals she will soon bear Chips a son. Alas,
the birth is difficult, proving fatal for both mother and child; Chips
returning to his classroom, shell-shocked and heartbroken after receiving the
news, only to have a prank perpetuated by his students, who have yet to learn
of his loss. Peter Colley II bursts into the classroom, quietly spreading the
word Miss Kathy has died. A pall settles in; the boys intimately sharing in
Chips’ grief.

Time
passes. And while Chips grows more
beloved, evolving into a cornerstone of the academy, time has not diminished
his great sadness. Wetherby’s death
results in the appointment of a new Head Master, Chatteris (Milton Rosmer), who
informs Chips the old ways are dying and must be updated to conform to the
‘new’ academic standards. Chips fights this indignation, the suggestion he is
out of fashion – and therefore, by extension, obsolete – hardly considered
worth debating, except to lambaste Chatteris as a ‘progressive’ who does not
appreciate what traditions and principles mean to the moral foundation of a
young man’s life. The school’s board of trustees takes Chips’ side in the
matter. Moreover, his pupils rally to his aid. As far as they are concerned,
Chips can stay on until he is a hundred. Alas, time does not stand still for
any man, and in 1914, Chips chooses retirement at the age of sixty-nine. After
an absence of some years, he becomes reacquainted with former student, Peter
Colley (now played as a dashing army sergeant by John Mills). Peter asks Chips
to look in on his young wife, Helen (Jill Furse) as she is expecting their
first child, even as he is being called to the front to fight the Germans in
WWI. Chips obliges this request and is pleasantly surprised when Brookfield’s
board of governors recalls him as their Head Master; more of a ceremonial post
as every available man of fighting age has already been sent to the front to
partake in the war.

Chips accepts
the challenge of keeping the school organized and vital during these trying
times, dealing with a belligerent elder student by caning his backside, but
then diplomatically explaining the grave situation facing both Brookfield’s
graduating class and the nation at large. The war exacts its pound of flesh,
Chips adding Max Staefel’s name to the fallen – Staefel having returned home to
fight for the Kaiser and dying as an enemy on the field of battle. But the most
disheartening loss is Peter Colley. Reading his name on the roll call of those
most recently killed in action quietly brings Chips to tears. A short while
later, Chips receives a cablegram: good news for a change. Armistice has been
declared. The war is over. At parade’s end in 1918, Chips relinquishes his
title as Brookfield’s Head Master, happily so, and retreats into peaceful
retirement. Once again, the years pass.
We advance to 1933, Chips awakening from his slumber to entertain a new
arrival, goaded by his peers into playing a practical joke on Chips. Instead,
Chips invites the boy in for some tea and cake.

The intimacy
shared in their conversation about childhood anxieties and lifelong camaraderie
yet to follow, quaintly reminds Chips of the years when Kathy strove to make
his home a bastion for his students; a place where they could confide in him.
After the boy leaves, memories unexpectedly begin to flood in and haunt Chips
to distraction. A short while later he is confined to bed, a withered old man
waiting to die. However, as he slips in
and out of consciousness, he overhears several of his colleagues discussing
what a pity it is he never married or had any children of his own. In reply,
Chips murmurs, “But you’re wrong. I have.
Thousands of them…and all boys.” As Chips closes his eyes, presumably for
the last time, a collage of faces pass before the camera with the strains of
Brookfield’s school song proudly echoing; all the boys and young men whose
lives Chips has helped to impact – indeed, the veritable ‘promises for a
brighter tomorrow’ pass before him – the last in line, young, Peter Colley, who
affectionately turns, smiles, and sweetly delivers the penultimate line of
farewell, “Goodbye, Mr.
Chips…goodbye.”

Goodbye Mr. Chips was begun under the aegis of the
late, Irving G. Thalberg; MGM’s wunderkind producer with a peerless track
record for creating starry-eyed magic from a good many literary properties his
boss, L.B. Mayer often disliked – not so much for their content – rather,
because they cost so much to produce. In some ways, Mayer’s decision to ‘streamline’ Metro’s output after
Thalberg’s untimely passing did much to homogenize the studio’s in-house style.
While MGM movies of the 1930’s could be counted upon to positively reek of
ultra-sophistication and glamor, the lighter confections coming off the
assembly line in the forties would emblemize Mayer’s affinity for homespun
family films – not terribly prepossessing, though nevertheless equally as
popular with audiences. Arguably, Goodbye, Mr. Chips is the last of
Thalberg’s artistic triumphs, director, Sam Wood (along with producer, Victor
Saville, Sidney Franklin, and, screenwriters, R.C. Sherriff, Claudine West,
Eric Maschwitz) paying tribute to the man who, in life, never afforded himself
a screen credit for guiding MGM onto such artistic heights: the title card
reading, “We wish to acknowledge here our
gratitude to the late Irving Thalberg, whose inspiration illuminates the
picture of ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips’.” Indeed, the legendary producer had left an
indelible mark, his artistic visions perfectly preserved for the ages since.

Here is another
chance for the Warner Archive (WAC) to do justice to a picture deserving of as
much love and care. We need Goodbye, Mr.
Chips on Blu-ray. Without question, it is one of the finest motion pictures
of any era, and certainly one of the most deserving deep catalog titles
currently under Warner Bros.’ custodianship. Warner Home Video’s old cardboard
insert DVD has been replaced by a Warner Archive MOD DVD, the results looking
pretty much the same and none too thrilling either. While the gray scale is
generally impressive, the original elements are in a desperate need of clean-up
and repair. Age-related artifacts are everywhere and, at times, thoroughly
distracting. Film grain has been preserved, but during several scenes, appears
slightly digitized rather than indigenous to its source. Also, I am distinctly
‘not loving’ the anomalies; edge
enhancement and pixelization scattered throughout. While the aforementioned are
slight, they nevertheless glaringly distract from the enjoyment of this classy
classic. Also, contrast levels are weak. Overall, the image is passable, but it
is about time Goodbye, Mr. Chips
made its way to hi-def. So, WAC, the gauntlet has been thrown down…please.
We could also use a refurbished audio, to minimize the annoying hiss and
pop that plagues quiescent scenes throughout this transfer. Extras are the
other disappointment. There are none! Not even a theatrical trailer! For shame!
Bottom line: Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a
golden entertainment from a year as perfect as movies get. It deserves far
better on home video. Here is to hoping it gets its just desserts sooner rather
than later.

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca